The Beasts that Hide from Man (21 page)

Tragically, the
vouroupatra
was not destined to survive for much longer. Extensive deforestation and the attendant disappearance of much of the wooded swampland terrain constituting this huge but highly reclusive bird’s habitat swiftly brought to an end the empire of the elephant birds, summarily consigning
Aepyornis maximus
—the last, and greatest, of its line—to the permanent exile of extinction.

By the beginning of the 18th century, the
vouroupatra
had gone, and for many years afterwards it would be deemed by Western science to be as imaginary as the mighty roc of Arabian Nights fame—a supremely ironic development, considering that most ornithologists nowadays agree that the legend of the roc and its enormous eggs was almost certainly inspired by the former existence of the great elephant bird.

Today, of course, the reality of the
vouroupatra
is no longer in doubt, endorsed by the silent testimony in museums worldwide of its towering skeletons—and its colossal eggs. They have been frequently dug up in fully preserved subfossil state from the coastal sands of this species’ erstwhile island dominion ever since the first three to be seen by Western scientists were brought back from southwestern Madagascar to Paris in 1851 by a French sea captain called Abadie. Their remains have accorded
Aepyornis maximus
a lasting place in the zoological record books, because they are the biggest eggs ever documented from any creature known to have existed on Earth. With a fluid capacity often exceeding two gallons, they are greater than ostrich eggs and even those of the biggest dinosaurs.

It is little wonder, therefore, that Butler favored the identification of Roberts’s titanic egg as that of an elephant bird—but if this
is
its correct identity, how can we explain its discovery a full 4,000 miles beyond Madagascar, on a sand dune in Australia? In answer to this, Butler postulated that the egg may simply have drifted there, borne upon the prevailing ocean currents.

This hypothesis is far from being as implausible as it might initially appear, for it so happens that the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean converge at the very coastal point where the egg was found, so that a great amount of flotsam and jetsam is frequently washed ashore there. In conjunction with this, Butler also noted that during the early period of Australia’s settlement by Westerners, French sealers and whalers operating in the coastal region containing the egg’s provenance generally used Madagascar as a base. As elephant bird eggs were (and still are) greatly valued novelties here, it is quite reasonable to assume that some of those French seagoers traveling to Australia from Madagascar may have brought back such eggs as souvenirs (as Abadie did)—and if any happened to be lost overboard (during a storm or shipwreck, for instance), they would certainly float ashore.

This, then, is one solution to the mystery of Australia’s giant egg.

Even so, an exceedingly out-of-place
Aepyornis
egg was not the only identity proposed by Butler for it. He also suggested that it may have originated from one of the huge species of extinct, superficially emu-like birds whose fossil remains have been found in parts of Queensland and South Australia, some of which date from as recently as the late Pleistocene.

These were the dromornids, also known as the mihirungs, and comprising a family that includes among its members the most massive, heaviest bird of all time—outweighing even the hefty
Aepyornis maximus
. Tipping the scales at half a ton, and perhaps as tall as 10 feet, this plant-eating behemoth of a bird is Stirton’s mihirung
Dromornis stirtoni
, whose thunderous footsteps echoed through the forests of northern Australia two and a half million years ago. Hardly a creature likely to be overlooked by science, one would have thought—which makes it all the more paradoxical that the mihirungs are not only among the largest but also among the least known of all giant birds.

Indeed, they scarcely received a mention in ornithological works until the late 1970s, when they belatedly began to generate interest and recognition by virtue of the extensive mihirung research being carried out by palaeontologist Dr. Pat Rich, from Melbourne’s Monash University, who has presented her comprehensive findings in numerous publications. These include two important multi-author volumes—
Kadimakara: Extinct Vertebrates of Australia
(1985), and
The Antipodean Ark
(1987).

As almost all of today’s burgeoning wealth of information on these enormous birds has thus been made available only in the last 15 years or so, one might be forgiven for assuming that science has not known of the mihirungs for very long, but this would be totally incorrect. In fact, the first evidence for their former existence had been brought to scientific attention as long ago as 1830. This was when Major (later Sir) Thomas Mitchell obtained a single mihirung femur bone during a fossil-collecting visit to the Wellington Valley caves of western New South Wales. Since then, many other fossilized remains have been found, so that several different species are now on record. Initially thought to have been giant emus (and occasionally termed “super-emus”), but built more on the lines of the much sturdier elephant birds in some cases (such as D.
stirtoni)
, mihirungs are now held to be more closely related to waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans) than to emus or other ratites, and have even been nicknamed the demon ducks of doom!

Mihirungs were once thought to have died out long before humans arrived in Australia, but this no longer appears to be true. Their last representative was Newton’s mihirung
Genyornis newtoni
, first made known to science in 1896 and currently known from fossils dating from as recently as 15,000 years ago. As humans are believed to have reached this island continent at least 40,000 years ago, humans and mihirungs co-existed for 25,000 years or more. In addition, memories of
Genyornis
—believed to have stood seven feet tall and endowed with a noticeably deep beak—seem to have been retained in the oral traditions of certain aboriginal tribes. In western Australia, for example, the Tjapwurong tribe’s legends mention a giant bird that greatly resembles the probable appearance in life of
Genyornis
as deduced from its skeletal anatomy. They refer to this bird as the
mihirung paringmal
—from which “mihirung” was later borrowed by science to provide a vernacular name for all members of the dromornid family.
Genyornis-like
birds also occur in examples of aboriginal rock art from northern Queensland.

As these legends are unlikely to have been preserved for as long as 15,000 years, and as the paintings are of much more recent date than this too, if the birds featured in them truly are mihirungs then this indicates that
Genyornis
persisted to a later date than currently provided by fossil evidence alone. What a pity that this spectacular bird did not survive right up to the present day, to be seen alive by modern man. But perhaps it has! According to a report in
Fabuleux Oiseaux
(1980) by Jean-Jacques Barloy and Pierre Civet, at least one such encounter may have taken place very recently.

In 1967, George and Jean Rollo were exploring the dense forest near Robertson, on the southern coast of New South Wales, when they were startled by a sudden loud noise, resembling the cracking of branches being pushed roughly to one side. Turning round, they were amazed to see, at close range, a gigantic bird that they likened to some sort of “super-emu,” and which they estimated to be more than nine feet tall, with a long neck but only vestigial wings and fairly sparse plumage. Before they were able to make any further observations of its appearance, however, the bird charged towards them, so that they were forced to withdraw with all speed! As the true Australian emu
Dromaius novaehollandiae
rarely exceeds six feet in total height, the Rollos’ antagonist clearly did not belong to this species; nor did it resemble an ostrich, thereby eliminating wide-ranging feral specimens from further consideration too. The only other ratite known to exist in Australia today is the double-wattled cassowary
Casuarius casuarius
, a mere five and a half feet tall. And so Barloy and Civet cautiously offered a mihirung as an identity.

Needless to say, this is a very remote one, but it does provide a thought-provoking tie-in with another ratite-related mystery Down Under. The fossils of
Genyornis
show that, prior to its extinction, its three-toed feet had been evolving toward a two-toed state, paralleling that of the ostrich. If
Genyornis
had survived into the present day, it is possible, therefore, that continued evolution would have completed this transformation to yield a genuinely two-toed species of mihirung. Is it just coincidence that the tracks of such a bird would have corresponded perfectly with those of Australia’s “abominable spinifex man”?

And speaking of ratite riddles, there is still the Western Australian Museum’s unidentified giant egg to consider. The short-lived flicker of scientific interest ignited by Harry Butler’s
Science Digest
report focused upon his aepyornid proposal to the absolute exclusion of his less-publicized, alternative hypothesis — that the egg was that of a mihirung. During the early 1980s, however, an oological discovery was announced that seemed on first sight to offer support for this latter suggestion.

In 1981, biologist Dr. David Williams from the University of South Australia revealed that several hundred fragments of enormous fossil eggshells had been collected from an eroding coastal sand dune near South Australia’s Port Augusta
(Alcheringa
, 1981). Radiocarbon dating indicated that they were at least 40,000 years old, and morphological comparisons implied that they were probably from
Genyornis
eggs. Based upon the fragments’ dimensions, estimates of the likely size of a complete
Genyornis
egg gave a length of roughly six inches, a width of five inches, and a weight of 2.86 pounds, thereby comparing with the very largest ostrich eggs on record. Moreover, as there is no reason to suppose that these particular fragments originated from unusually large
Genyornis
eggs, it is possible that this bird produced even bigger ones.

Taking all of this together, and supplying the additional fact that Port Augusta shares the coastline serving Nannup, site of the giant mystery egg’s discovery by Vic Roberts, surely the latter egg must be a mihirung’s? Although superficially persuasive, in reality this identity is far less convincing than it may initially appear. This is because water, percolating through the dune’s sand while the egg lay there for several millennia (the scenario as predicted by the mihirung hypothesis), would have completely dissolved the shell. Fragments may have survived, but not an entire egg. Also, as I

learned from Dr. Ron Johnstone of the Western Australian Museum’s Department of Ornithology, despite rumors to the contrary the egg is
not
fossilized, but is of geologically Recent date (with a very porous surface, heavily pitted by sand-blasting), renewing support for an aepyornid origin (unless it was from an undiscovered modern-day mihirung?!).

I am greatly indebted to Dr. Johnstone for bringing to my attention a second, very comparable case of a dramatically out-ofplace egg—one of much later date but of great relevance to this longstanding mystery. In January 1991, Ongerup farmer Kelly O’Neill discovered a 4.4-inch-long, 3.2-inch-wide, barnacle-encrusted egg washed ashore near Bremer Bay, on Australia’s South Coast and later publicized in the
Great Southern Herald
(June 19, 1991, issue). It was identified at the Western Australian Museum as that of a king penguin
Aptenodytes patagonica
, a species native to Kerguelen and other sub-Antarctic islands sited off the southeastern coast of Africa! This is not an isolated case either—17 years earlier, ornithologist Geoff Lodge had found a similar specimen…washed ashore close to Nannup!

As Dr. Johnstone states, this provides additional support for Butler’s belief that large eggs can be transported by ocean currents for thousands of miles from their place of origin to the South Coast of Australia, and greatly strengthens his theory of an aepyornid identity for Australia’s anomalous giant egg—a theory to which Johnstone also subscribes. After more than 60 years it would seem, therefore, that the mystery of one unexpected egg’s arrival in Australia has at last been solved—by the arrival here of another one!

But even this is not the end of the story. In March 1993, three children—Jamie Andrich (9), Kelly Pew (8), and Michelle Pew (6)— dug up a massive egg, with a circumference of 32.2 inches, out of some sandhills about half a mile away from the beach at Cervantes, 150 miles north of Perth. Dr. Ken McNamara, the Western Australian Museum’s senior paleontological curator, speculated that it was either another
Aepyornis
egg that had been carried by ocean currents from Madagascar, or, of even greater scientific importance, the first fully intact mihirung egg recorded by science. It was later shown to be the former.

Most closely related to the emu among living ratites and distributed widely through Australasia, the cassowaries constitute a trio of imposing, forest-dwelling species with black, spine-like feathers enlivened by brilliantly colored patches of red, mauve, or blue skin on their neck; a multifarious assemblage of commensurately gaudy wattles; and a bony helmet-like casque, again of varying appearance. The native tribes sharing their jungle domain often keep young cassowaries as pets, but greatly fear the adult birds on account of their formidable claws—with which, the natives aver, they can readily disembowel with a single kick anyone foolish enough to threaten them. Even so, this does not prevent many tribes from utilizing cassowaries as a form of feathered currency, trading living specimens or select portions of dead ones (particularly the casque, claws, and feathers) far and wide in exchange for useful items such as domestic livestock—and wives! The late Dr. Thomas Gilliard, an expert on New Guinea avifauna, learned that in Papua the rate of exchange for one live cassowary is eight pigs, or one woman!